2004 Aviation Law & Safety News Article Excerpts

USA Today, "Ebersol crash inquiry focuses on ice, flaps"

The probe of Sunday's plane crash that killed NBC sports executive Dick Ebersol's 14-year-old son is focused on whether the chartered jet's wings were coated with ice or if wing flaps that help the plane climb were not in proper position, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator said Wednesday. More...

MSNBC.com, "US Army helicopter in Texas crash, 7 soldiers die"

A U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter clipped wires supporting a TV tower and crashed in foggy weather in central Texas on Monday, killing all seven soldiers on board, witnesses and military officials said. More...

The New York Times, "Report Faults FAA Action On Handling Risky Cargoes"

The Federal Aviation Administration's campaign to keep hazardous materials off airplanes, begun after an improper shipment caused a crash in the Florida Everglades that killed 110 people eight years ago, has generated thousands of enforcement cases and tens of millions of dollars in civil penalties. More...

China Daily, "Plane crash raises vital safety questions"

The recovery of the two cockpit recorders of the crashed plane in Baotou, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region will hopefully help decode the cause of the accident, but it is not necessarily going to dispel the growing "flying panic" of the public. More...

Newsday (New York), "Avianca crash spurred changes in safety steps"

On a foggy winter night in 1990, an Avianca passenger jet carrying 158 people crashed into a hillside in the secluded community of Cove Neck. There was no fireball. No smoky wreckage on the ground. Investigators and emergency responders would later say that was because the jet, heading from Bogota, Colombia, to Kennedy Airport, had simply run out of fuel while circling and waiting to land. A total of 73 out of the 158 people on board died. More...

Canadian Press NewsWire, "Crashed jet not overloaded, probe shifts to engines"

Investigators in the fatal crash of a massive cargo jet near Halifax have virtually ruled out overloading as the cause and are instead probing the mystery of why the engines were underpowered at takeoff. Bill Fowler, lead investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, told The Canadian Press the flight data recorder shows the MK Airlines 747 jet's weight at takeoff was "fairly close to" 352,400 kilograms. More...

Air Safety Week, "Report of Dual Engine Flameout On Trans-Atlantic Flight Raises Significant Safety Issues"

It took a less than 70 hours of chafing for a hole to be breached in the fuel line, but only about 13 minutes for the computer systems to lead the pilots up the garden path of a fuel imbalance to total fuel exhaustion. More...

The Kansas City Star, "Kirksville crash puts light on issue"

The crash of a commuter plane near Kirksville that killed 13 persons is again raising questions about "tired pilot" syndrome and the federal government's slowness in addressing the problem. Last week's crash remained under investigation Thursday, and there was no indication whether mechanical failure, the weather or pilot fatigue played a role. More...

USA Today, "Airplane pilots' long hours put passengers at risk"

USA Today's article on the commuter plane crash in Missouri noted the flight crew "had been on duty for 14 hours and 41 minutes" and that the "investigation will examine whether fatigue contributed to the accident". "As a regional airline captain with eight years of experience, I can assert with confidence that fatigue does play a major role in many airplane accidents." More...

Newsday (New York), "Airbus Rudder System: Two planes, one problem; As NTSB prepares to issue its final report on crash of Flight 587, some insist 1997 jet almost met same fate"

The head of the National Transportation Safety Board recently sat in the cockpit of an Airbus jet parked at American Airlines' maintenance hangar in Tulsa, Okla. The number on the tail of the plane was N90070. It was an odd coincidence. The chairwoman's trip to Tulsa last month was a chance for American officials to demonstrate some points about the Airbus as safety board members prepared to meet on the cause of the crash of Flight 587, the Airbus that crashed three years ago in Queens. More...

The Kansas City Star, "Airplane had encountered engine problems in the past"

The aircraft that crashed into a Kirksville, Mo., field on Tuesday night experienced at least two engine shutdowns on previous flights. According to Federal Aviation Administration records, the incidents occurred less than four months apart. The first was in October 2000 and the second in January 2001. It's unclear whether that history had anything to do with Tuesday's disaster, and in fact at least one expert is convinced it didn't. More...

Air Safety Week, "'Special Conditions' for Fuel Tank Safety Challenged"

A proposal to grant "special conditions" for a Boeing system to prevent fuel tank explosions has drawn sharp rebukes for the appearance of favoritism and skirting the established certification process.

In response to a Boeing proposal to equip its aircraft with a lightweight system to inert center wing tanks, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) outlined in a Dec. 9, 2003, notice the criteria under which it would consider such a system for approval.

"Special conditions" can be issued by the FAA in those cases where existing regulations do not provide adequate safety standards for novel or unusual" design features. The FAA believes Boeing's flammability reduction system, for which it is seeking certification, is one of those situations.